A little more history. Fragments.

George G. Struckman left Germany during a politically repressive time during the mid-1800s. He was one of the so-called ’48-ers. We think he chose Bartlett, Illinois, to be close to other German immigrants. He had a good education, but I don’t know from what school. I’ll share it with you when I find out.

His wife’s maiden name was Bouchee. She was a musician and a 7th-Day Adventist. She and George’s house still stands in Bartlett, privately owned, but it is a landmark. I recall as a 6th grader visiting the house with its distinctive facade.

I think I mentioned that George fought in the American Civil War for the North. Because his grandson (my father) died when I was a small child I didn’t get the history lesson like I got from my mother and her side of the family.

This is a work in progress.

March 4, 2021

On this day in 1943, my Uncle Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr., was inducted into the United States Army.  He was 19 years old.

Today I went through one of the trunks with old pictures, kids’ artwork, photo albums, like that.  Envelopes had stacks of photos, and I didn’t look at them all.  A couple cigar boxes had a stray mitten, assorted junk.  A clamp for … I don’t know what.  Broken glass at the bottom of the trunk, presumably from a framed picture.  I don’ know.  I left it there.

Typical of many couples, we had dozens of photos of our oldest son, Todd, a few of the next, Bob, and a few of our youngest, Clara.  I saw an album with several photos of Clara’s namesake, her great-grandmother Clara McMain.  She was in a nursing home in Lewistown, a victim of diabetes.  Clara had one leg and was nearly blind.  But she had a happy smile, holding Todd in one picture, holding a knitted throw rug in another.  Posing with P. in a third.

We have another trunk, one that belonged to my mother when she went away to college, from Kalispell to Valley City, North Dakota.  That one has much older material from my childhood, even some from hers.

A wooden box that had once held a cream separator is upstairs, and it had the suitcase from P’s father, some memorabilia from our wedding in 1971, and some stuff from our grade school and high school years.

Downstairs in the basement I’ve got a pile of stuff from my own high school years, including my photo album.  Mother gave me a photo album when I was in the 7th grade, so I scotch taped pictures into it.  Unfortunately, the scotch tape dried out and the pictures came unstuck.  Since then I bought, or found, a packet of adhesive corners for fixing photographs into a picture album, but I never seemed to find the time to employ them.